Veteran Pro Stock Motorcycle racer Joe DeSantis had a familiar face in the pits helping him out at the 2016 U.S. Nationals – Michael Phillips.

“I just come and help him and try and get his bike figured out for him,” Phillips said.
DeSantis came up short with a best ET of 8.551 seconds at Lucas Oil Raceway at Indianapolis.
Phillips said he plans on competing on four more races this season on DeSantis’ bike in St. Louis (Sept. 23-25), 

Dallas (Oct. 13-16), Las Vegas (Oct. 27-30) and Pomona (Nov. 10-13). In 2017, Phillips expects to be back competing in Pro Stock Motorcycle full-time, something he hasn’t done since 2012.

“The plan is to go out and run my own stuff next year,” Phillips said. “I have a pretty good deal working right now and it’s looking really good. I’m going to run a Suzuki, I’m a diehard Suzuki guy. Since 2012, I’ve just been messing with a lot of my street bike stuff. I’ve been doing a lot of grudge racing stuff. I have some pretty fast street bikes.”

Phillips was fortunate to make the trip to Indianapolis for the U.S. Nationals since he lives in Baton Rouge, La.,where historic flooding took place last month.

“I got no damage at all to my house,” Phillips said. “My daughter (Mekel, 14), and I walked down at like 2 in the morning and put a mark down. She couldn’t sleep and she kept going down and checking the mark to see how high the water was getting. If it would’ve made it past the mark then we would’ve got all the bikes and stuff out and got all the equipment was. We survived it, thank God for that. A lot of people had 10 to 11 feet of water in their houses. It was crazy.”